Circus
When Tyranny Came to Ancient Rome
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Circus
Pre-order for $25.88
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Jessica Clarke
Summary
'Expansive, erudite and intricately staged, Jessica Clarke’s Circus pulls back the curtains on the final acts of the Roman Republic’s fall.' Emily Hauser, bestselling author of Mythica
'Jessica Clarke combines excellent scholarship with brilliant writing... the reader becomes chillingly aware: this is also about the risk of failing democracies.' Gabriel Zuchtriegel, author of The Buried City
The untold story of how propaganda and power struggles toppled the Roman Republic, destroying centuries of political freedom.
In 49BC, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and Rome fell into a brutal civil war. The institutions that gave its people a voice crumbled and, after the dust settled, Rome was forevermore ruled by emperors.
But Rome didn’t fall in a day. For centuries, its people had taken pride in the fact that they had overthrown their King and vowed that they would never have another. So why did the Roman people give up their political freedom? How did one-man rule become the new normal? And after the violent assassination of Caesar, why wasn’t the Republic restored? Was it simply, as the Roman poet Juvenal claimed, because the people only cared about one thing: bread and circuses?
This is not just another history of Rome; Jessica Clarke takes us right into the heart of the wars, back-stabbings, uprisings and creeping normalisation of propaganda and disinformation that fractured the Republic. Lifting the veil on the political machinations of a series of ruthlessly ambitious oligarchs, Circus is a page-turning exploration of the spectacular culture and theatrical politics of the final battle for the Roman Republic.
Critic Reviews
The story of Caesar's assassination, the build-up and the aftermath, the intrigues and the details and the outcomes of all the people involved - it's all familiar territory. But in Circus, Jessica Clarke's remarkable new book, every detail and every action is reframed and reenergized and brought to new and vivid life.
Ancient Rome emerges as a rowdy, unstable city in this hugely original book. Jessica Clarke offers a fresh and vivid look at the collapse of the republic, showing how the theatre and games contributed to the destruction of Rome’s fragile governance.
Gripping theatrical extravaganza, grand political passion.
Jessica Clarke’s the rising star of Roman history, an expert on the permanent stone theatres of the late Roman Republic. Here she unerringly and imaginatively places the vast spiderweb of new theatres, amphitheatres and race courses spreading throughout Italy and beyond within the cold propagandistic gaze of new tyrant emperor Augustus.
A tour de force! Circus brings one of the most pivotal, heart-stopping eras of the Roman Empire to life with breathtaking clarity. (Amy Boyington, author of Hidden Patrons)
In NY, everyone is reading this book about tyranny and ancient Rome by the hit new voice Dr Jessica Clarke.
Expansive, erudite and intricately staged, Jessica Clarke’s Circus pulls back the curtains on the final acts of the Roman Republic’s fall, and unmasks the theatre of Rome’s history in all its blood, spectacle and glory. A captivating show awaits!
This is a tour de force from Jessica: she gives readers a chance to live and breathe each critical moment of Rome’s re-orientation towards tyranny, masterfully taking us back and forth in time showing how both seismic and everyday events contributed to the eventual fall of the Republic. She’s pinpoints, with chilling echoes for today’s world, how peoples’ views were systematically re-programmed to accept tyranny, and serves it all up as a performance worthy of any ancient theatre.
Utterly brilliant. Gripping, vivid, immersive and electrifying, Circus makes Rome’s theatre of politics with its triumphs and festivals feel dangerously contemporary and breathes such urgent life into the characters who populated it that we feel we recognise them today.
A colourful and animated account of the demise of the Roman Republic.
Jessica Clarke combines excellent scholarship with brilliant writing. Circus is a joy for experts because of Clarke's fresh view on the sources and a wonderful guide for anyone who wants to approach the history of the Roman Republic and understand its chaotic final decades. Nowhere in the book does Clarke talk explicitly about the present, and yet the reader becomes chillingly aware: this is also about the present and about the risk of failing democracies.
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